Mr. Chair, as I said prior to this, in all of our discussions on division 20 in the bill.... This is certainly not because of anything Ms. Sheppard has done. She's a fine public servant, and I appreciate her presence here. But again, this is the wrong body to be examining this. The justice committee could have called witnesses, academic, legal, and other concerned stakeholder groups, to give this the full scrutiny it deserves.
What I find even more offensive in the amendment that has been put forward by Ms. O'Connell is directly this. In a five-year statutorily required review, we are studying Canada's money-laundering laws. We have yet to make any recommendations to the Government of Canada in regard to that. Here we are, a finance committee, putting such a serious economic crime as money laundering into a schedule that will apply and that will give the rough equivalent of a “get out of jail” card for those who agree to a deferred prosecution agreement.
We have not studied division 20 in depth. We've had no witnesses, save Ms. Sheppard. In my view, we are not the body, despite the fact that we have some very distinguished members here—I hold them all in quite good stead—that should be studying this departure from the criminal justice system. There's irony in our making recommendations on whether or not money laundering should be included as part of this new regime when we have yet to even conclude, or even hear any evidence, that this regime should be put in place for dealing with a serious economic crime like money laundering.
I would hope that government members would see that as being not a proper process. We are going to be travelling internationally to find out what other countries are doing, and here we are including that in a deferred prosecution agreement without having heard any single person beyond someone from the Department of Justice on the rationale as to why it should be included.
Again, I hate to be that stick in the mud, Mr. Chair, but I guess I'll be that stick in the mud and say that this is the wrong body and that this is at the wrong time. If we were to make such a judgment, it should be after our including it in our money-laundering review on the regime we have in Canada.